Spa Secrets

Slide behind the chair with Delaware’s beauty experts. They know your secrets. Now, here are some of theirs.

by Melissa Jacobs

(page 2 of 7)

Men get manicures at Randy Currie’s salons, but he isn’t one of them. After studying with Vidal Sassoon in London, Currie opened his first salon, Razzle Dazzle, in Wilmington in 1978. In 1990 he moved to Glen Mills and launched Currie Hair Skin and Nails (585 Wilmington-West Chester Pike, Glen Mills, Pa., 610-558-4247). He’s back in Wilmington with a new location on the Riverfront (317 S. Justison St., 777-7755). But Currie doesn’t get manicures. His favorite treatment? “A massage, preferably with hot stones. It’s incredibly relaxing.”

Paul Van Liew loves massage, but he also loves facials. “I like the cleanliness of my skin after the facial,” he says. “But then, I love the massage, too. I’m torn.” Van Liew can have plenty of both at Pagavé (1601 Concord Pike, Suite 35, Wilmington, 765-0134), which he opened in 2006, after an education in graphic design and a career in photography. “It wasn’t until I moved to Wilmington that I realized that I wanted to be a hair stylist,” he says.

L. Drexel Davison realized he wanted to be a stylist after he spent years in the restaurant world. “I was a cater waiter in Manhattan, working the most fabulous parties for the most fabulous people,” he says. With a $3,000 loan from his father, Davison then opened a salon in his native Delaware. “I was going to call the salon Metamorphosis, but I kept messing up the spelling. I had a hat that said, ‘Bad Hair Day,’ so that became the name.” What’s Davison’s favorite treatment at Bad Hair Day (45 Lake Ave., Rehoboth Beach, 227-4247)? Pedicures. “Halfway through the first foot, I think, ‘Thank God I have another foot so I can get this done again.’”

Maureen Frebery fell in love with the salon business while working as a salon shampoo girl in high school. “My parents didn’t want me to go to cosmetology school,” Frebery says. “They didn’t think it would be a steady job or a good atmosphere for a single girl. I respected their wishes, but I just had to do hair.” During the day, Frebery worked for the telephone company. At night, she went to cosmetology school. In 1968, she fulfilled her dream by opening Maureen’s Hair Salon and Day Spa, (4813 Limestone Road, Wilmington, 234-7800). And, yes. She does her mother’s hair.

Carol Brennan bought The Upper Cut (119 S. Dupont Hwy., Dover, 736-1661) in 1992. “I’d gone to college for fashion merchandising,” Brennan says. “My parents wanted me to be a buyer for a big New York department store. They thought it would be a stable job. But I’d been doing hair since I was a little girl, even doing my dolls’ hair. In the dorm at college, I did all of the girls’ hair. So after college, I got a job as a shampoo assistant and went to beauty school. It’s a wacky business, but this is where I belong.”